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Is it possible for a trigger to action a field on a different table?

D
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Hello, 

I am using a form to register event attendees. This form sits within a table called "Event". However, the registrants are records in different tables. I want the completed form to trigger a contact on a different table (within the same base), to update a field marking "registered to attend event". Is this possible?

Attached is the automation I have set up, and when I tested the automation with test data it worked. The field in the other table was updated. However, over night, I received lots of error messages. I wonder if it is because I used the record " When a record matches condition", and therefore it is continuously running? The error was occurring at "update record" and was saying "Received invalid inputs". 

Sometimes it was working. Sometimes it was not. 

Would anyone be able to help please?

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TheTimeSavingCo
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"When a record matches condition" only triggers once.  If the data changes to something that doesn't match the condition, and then changes to something that matches the condition again, then it'll trigger again.  Were the email addresses added and removed a bunch of times?

If you could provide screenshots of the relevant tables with example data (or better yet, invite me to a base with example data), I could take a look at this for you.  Would love to help, but it's difficult to troubleshoot this as I don't know how the data's set up or what changes you'd like done

Adam, Consultant @ The Time Saving Co
ScottWorld
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  • ScottWorld
  • Brainy
  • 8773 replies
  • February 8, 2024

@DaringCapital 

A few potential issues going on here:

1. You are using the trigger “when email isn’t empty”. What that means is that if your email field starts off empty, then your automation will trigger as soon as you start typing the very first character of an email address. Remember that you always want your automations to be triggered by either a drop-down menu or a checkbox field, unless your data is coming in through a form (so choose the form submission trigger) or through the API (so any conditional trigger is fine). More details and examples in this thread: https://air.tableforums.com/t/what-are-the-pros-cons-to-using-a-checkbox-vs-yes-no-single-select-vs-text-field/915

2. The update records step can only handle a single record ID, so if your “find records” action found more than one record (which hopefully it shouldn’t), you would need to loop through the results. However, Airtable only allows one loop per automation and you have 2 find records actions, so for anything more than one, you would either need to write a script, create multiple different automations (max 50), or turn to Make’s advanced automations for Airtable. Airtable also doesn’t let you combine loops and conditional statements, which would be another reason to use Make.

3. Depending on your business, there might be better ways to structure your database or even use Fillout to enable people to update their existing contact record by adding the events that they want to attend.

p.s. If you have a budget for your project and you’d like to hire an expert Airtable consultant to help you with any of this, please feel free to contact me through my website: Airtable consultant — ScottWorld 

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